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Keys hiding in couch cushions. Wayward wallets causing panic. It’s estimated that each of us will spend six months of our lives looking for things we’ve lost. San Diego startup XY wants to make locating lost items as easy as Googling for directions.

If the plastic fob goes beyond the phone’s range, a push notification is sent.

Its solution is a $17 hexagonal piece of hardware, about the size of a 50 cent piece, that contains a Bluetooth Low Energy chipset. The hardware tag is paired with an iPhone or Android app, registered on XY’s website, and can be looped onto a keychain, glued onto a laptop, or worn around your pet’s neck.

The the app pings the tag every 15 to 30 seconds, and if the plastic fob goes beyond the phone’s 50-150 foot range, it sends a push notification alerting you that you’re in danger of losing your possession. The app uses a “warmer, colder” scale as well as signal strength bars to help you hone in on their missing items–a cute conceit, but realistically, a byproduct of the technology’s inability to pinpoint an exact location.

Users can look up the last known location of each tag on a map and if the object is truly lost, it’s possible for a good samaritan, and fellow XY app user, to alert the owner via the web. Each tag is registered on the XY website, so fellow users who find a lost item can send messages to the owner even if no contact information is available.

Old Idea, New UX

XY’s companion app looks less like a security tool and more like a Pinterest page. Instead of a list of serial numbers, users see photos of the objects they’ve associated with tags and how many are in range. The hardware will be available in seven colors at launch to facilitate finding things, and fashion. “We wanted to design something that wouldn’t look out-of-place on a purse,” says co-founder Daniel Wang. “Tech by itself isn’t sufficient, technology needs to be tied to the right design,” adds co-founder Nicholas Trouw.

Wang estimates there are at least 15 other startups approaching this market, though he argues that few of them have aced the user experience. System-on-a-chip solutions handle most of the hardware challenges and make it easy for companies to enter the space, but Wang believes his deep experience in location services will provide a critical edge.

Beyond launching XY, Wang runs Webble, which specializes in creating location-based apps for conventions. They’ve developed apps and analytics that help fans navigate sprawling conventions like the San Diego Comic-Con and are putting that knowledge to work in hardware.

For instance, any time you deal with location, privacy becomes paramount. “The first thing I wanted to put the beacon on is my kids,” says Wang. “So privacy is a big concern.” Since they’re using Apple’s public iBeacon tools as the foundation, the team searched for solutions that would ensure convenience without opening the floodgates to cyber-stalking.

Ultimately, they designed the system so that after the initial pairing each ping would use a unique and randomly generated code that is indecipherable without the original pairing key. Could it be hacked? With enough time, anything is possible, but it’s not going to be easy.

Competitors Abound

The biggest challenge for XY, and the product category, most likely will be fragmentation. Tools to help find lost keys have been staples of SkyMall and Sharper Image catalogs for decades. A competitor named Tile raised $2.6 million dollars in pre-orders from 49,586 customers, though its product has yet to ship. The StickR TrackR raised more than $350,000 on IndieGoGo. To move beyond gimmick status, these platforms will need to achieve some kind of critical mass or interoperability, otherwise all the promises of networked detection will fall short.

XY has raised $140,000 from 2,847 customers, but plans to have beta kits for sale by WonderCon on April 18th. Though it isn’t the first to announce a product, XY hopes to beat some bigger players to market. “There’s been so much excitement around what you can do with it,” says Wang. “There hasn’t been a lot of attention on getting it done.”

Despite the crowded market, Wang believes it is big enough to support a number of innovators. “XY is part of a groundswell, these sensors are cheap enough and power-efficient enough to be part of everything,” he says. “Soon enough, every single device will be broadcasting in some way.”

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